Snow geese are among the migrating flocks streaming across Houston skies
By Gary Clark, Kathy Adams Clark,CorrespondentsDec 14, 2024
Flocks of snow geese migrate to Texas in the winter.
Kathy Adams Clark
Great clouds of snow geese are streaming across our winter skies, having arrived along Texas’ coastal regions and inland fallow farm fields after flying more than 1,600 miles from the Arctic.
They orient themselves to Texas by using such factors as the position of the sun, as well as their ability to sense magnetic fields. Rivers and landscapes also furnish them with a map.
Older geese who’ve made the journey often help younger geese to learn the route. Perhaps the young birds also learn the energy efficiency of flying in V-formations, called echelons, in which the lead goose breaks air resistance, causing an aerodynamic uplift for the trailing birds. Being the lead goose is exhausting, so each goose in the echelon takes turns as the leader. The constant V-formations of flying snow geese also enable the flock to keep each other in view.
Once they arrive here, the silky-white birds with black wing tips billow up from marshes and fields in huge groups, yelping and chortling in a strangely coordinated chorus as they sail through the sky in their loose V-shaped formation, usually with one side of the V slightly shorter than the other.
Thousands of snow geese migrate during the winter months.Restricted use.
Kathy Adams Clark/Kathy Adams Clark/KAC Productions
A grayish goose that looks blue against the sky or on a prairie is often seen with flocks of snow geese. Although colloquially called a blue goose and once considered a separate species, the bird is merely a color morph of a snow goose and no different from the other white geese than people with blue eyes are different from other people.
Also, look for a small, duck-sized white goose in the flock called the Ross’ goose, which is a distinct species from snow geese. The elfin-looking goose has a rounded forehead and a stubby beak. It’s easy to see within a flock of snow geese feeding on the ground but not so easy to spot in a flock of flying snow geese.
Snow geese feed on waste grain in agricultural fields and seeds, leaves and stems in prairies. In a behavior called “grubbing,” they use their beaks to dig up underground root stalks called rhizomes.
Flocks of brownish geese, called greater white-fronted geese because of their bright-white foreheads, are arriving from Arctic regions. They also display a white horseshoe pattern on the upper rump and dark speckles across their bellies, earning them the nickname “specklebellies.”
Snow geese feed on waste grain in agricultural fields. Flocks of snow geese migrate to Texas in the winter.
Kathy Adams Clark
Migrating geese
- Great flocks of snow geese migrate to Texas from breeding grounds in both the Canadian and high Arctic.
- Ross’ geese migrate from breeding grounds at the Queen Maud Gulf Migratory Bird Sanctuary of the central Canadian Arctic.
- Greater white-fronted geese migrate from breeding grounds on the Arctic Tundra, which extends from near Hudson Bay to Siberia, Russia and Greenland.
- Canada geese are the most widespread geese in North America. They have seven subspecies and breed in Canadian provinces and the upper half of the United States.
- Cackling geese were decoupled from Canada geese as a distinct species, which includes four subspecies. They breed on the Arctic coastal plain, including coastal marshes, tundra ponds, streams, and shore slopes.
Email Gary Clark at Texasbirder@comcast.net |
